Christie: Thank you so much for having me here, Denise, I’m so excited to get to talk to you today. 

Denise: I am so excited to talk to you. So for the women who haven’t heard any of our work before, can you tell our audience just a little bit about you?  

Christie: Sure. So I am, like Denise said, I am a Catholic life and sobriety coach. I work with women who are realizing that. Maybe they don’t have an alcohol problem, but it’s becoming a problem for them. 

So that can mean either women who drink every night, sometimes it’s women that just drink once a week habitually. It just means that it’s causing a lot of chaos in their life, and they’re realizing that greatly reducing or eliminating it altogether would be super, super helpful.

Denise: Yes. I love that. And tell us a little bit about your family and your private life. 

Christie: Sure. So I live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. It’s beautiful. Now, it’s not raining. We’ve had a really good summer. I’ve been married to my husband Chris for 20 years. We have twins who are 18. They just graduated and they’re going off to college and all of those fun things.

And I have a 12-year-old son who is going into seventh grade. He loves sports and he’s gonna be playing football for the first time this year. So I love football, so I’m super excited. Kind of jealous because you live in Chicago. My favorite team is the Chicago Bears and it has been my entire life, which is crazy from a girl that grew up in Idaho. But you know, our teams find us where we are. 

Denise: And to give a little credibility to your ability to help women in sobriety. How many years have you been sober?  

Christie: Yeah, so I have been alcohol free for over 28 years, which seems crazy. It seems like a lifetime, but it’s so fun. So yeah, I really decided. I didn’t decide like God told me like, this is what you need to be doing. I always had this heart for wanting to help people who were struggling with alcohol. I thought. Mainly I’d be working with people like me in recovery, who after we stopped drinking things don’t always just get magically better.

There’s a lot of life to clean up. So I thought I would be doing a lot of life coaching work for women, Catholic women specifically who are in recovery, just to work through all of those things. Relationships, finances, work. Everything that comes up after, but then God just kept putting these women in front of me who wouldn’t find themselves in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, wouldn’t really label themselves anything, which is great.

You don’t have to label yourself anything, but they were realizing that alcohol was really becoming a problem for them, and they wanted to figure out a way to dial it back, and were having a really, really hard time doing that. 

Denise: Yeah. So the Lord called you to be alcohol free, but the majority of the women that you’re working with, he does not call them to be alcohol free. So I love that you’re helping women on the spectrum, so wherever they find themselves and wherever the Lord is calling them. You mentioned that you help Catholic women. Have you always been a cradle   

Christie: I am a cradle Catholic. I went to Catholic school for many years and I wouldn’t say that I was ever super devout, but I had a good knowledge of God and the church and all of that. But I kind of fell away from the church especially after I started drinking. I became nominal at best. I was a Christmas and Easter Catholic, sometimes Palm Sunday ’cause palms are fun and Mother’s Day if my mom asked me to. 

So I was very sporadic for many years. But I will say that my. Faith journey and my sobriety journey intersected. I kind of grew up thinking like God, I know God loves me, but I don’t really think he’s that interested in me or really cares what I am doing. He doesn’t really answer my prayers and those types of things.

But I had a supernatural encounter one night. Where I had passed out again after drinking way, way, way too much, and I woke up feeling like I was being strangled, and I looked up and I saw this like dark figure over me and I could not breathe. And then all of a sudden, like this lighter figure came up over and I just sensed it, say not yet. And then both of them were gone. 

Denise: I got chills. 

Christie: I know it’s remarkable because that was the turning point where I thought, maybe God is fighting for me. Maybe he is trying to reach me in some way. Now, I didn’t stopped drinking. I didn’t run to the nearest Catholic church. But I will say that was the thing that started my journey toward alcohol freedom and toward the Catholic Church.

Denise: We can stop the podcast now. Oh my gosh, I just want let, I wanna just sit in his presence right now. I mean that I’ve never heard Christie, I’ve known you for years now and I’ve never heard that story. 

Christie: I know. It’s funny because I had that forever and I just never thought it was something that would impact people. But I was working with a coach and we were just going through my whole timeline, my whole story timeline, and that came up and she reacted like you did. She’s like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You just glossed over that let’s back up. And I don’t know, I guess I just didn’t realize how impactful it was for me and what a huge grace that was.  

Denise: And what I often like to tell women is that he is always trying to get your attention and that he loves you so, so much. And when you said at that moment you had the possibility, you considered the possibility. That the Lord is fighting for me. And if people take nothing away from this podcast, that is the truth for each one of us. He’s always fighting for us. 

Christie: Yeah. 

Denise: And maybe that’s all he needs you to hear. You dear listener out there. But we’ve got more in store for you. 

Christie: Yes. 

Denise: So thank you so much Christie. I’d like to move into some of the questions that I get from women, and I wanted to pose them to you because you are our alcohol expert. Okay. So one of the questions that I get from women is they will join 63 surrendered, and in 63 surrendered, we create an easy to stick to meal plan. 

And then they always say, where should I put alcohol? And I always say just plan it like you would plan anything else. Make it easy to stick to. For the women who find it hard. To be able to anticipate how much they’re going to drink, or sometimes they can stick to it, sometimes they can’t, and then they realize, wow, alcohol actually is a bigger thing for me in my life than I thought it was a bigger obstacle.

I get one of the questions that say, and I thought you and I could share our perspectives on it. If alcohol is a problem for me, and if food is a problem for me, where do I start? Do I do both? Do I do one? And what would you tell that woman?  

Christie: Yeah. I would definitely say that if you have any goals to want to lose weight, and I know that’s not always the focus right away with, or I don’t think that’s the focus right away with your program. It’s more about awareness and planning and all of those things. 

But I would say that. Alcohol. Even if it’s just one glass of wine a night is really inhibiting your ability to lose weight. And the reason why is because alcohol affects every single cell in our body. It’s water soluble. It’s fat soluble. It is one of those very unique substances that can pass through the blood brain barrier. 

The blood-brain barrier is like a high security checkpoint that keeps bacteria out of our brains and keeps other things out of our brains and in the blood system where they can get cleaned out. But alcohol, the reason why you get such an instant effect is because it just shoots right in. Passes that blood brain barrier doesn’t have to be processed or anything else. 

The problem with that, when you’re losing weight is that once you ingest alcohol, let’s say you eat on plan, you eat whatever you’ve planned, and then you have a glass of wine that you planned, your body is going to first work to rid itself of the alcohol, and it does that by taking that ethanol.

And making that into another chemical that’s actually even more poisonous and then makes it into another chemical that makes it less poisonous, but can be metabolized. And all of this happens in the liver. 

So let’s say you ate like a big steak dinner, that’s gonna just sit there while your body works on the alcohol, and then it will address whatever else you’ve ingested. So there’s so many reasons why I would suggest if you’re doing the 63 surrendered or one-on-one coaching with Denise to focus on alcohol first, even if it’s not a problem for you at least. 

Trying to eliminate it for that, maybe the first little bit, you know, 30, 60, 90 days, see how you feel and then kind of reintroduce it. Because the other thing with alcohol is it affects all of our, like neurotransmitters, right? So it affects the gaba, it affects our prefrontal cortex, which that. The thing that kind of has the inhibitors in it, that helps us not be so impulsive. 

So with habitual drinking, again, even if it’s just once a week, it can then make it really hard for you to keep your commitments. To, or your plan, or stick to your plan with food because it has affected your neurotransmitters in a way that it’s created this habitual pathway. So that’s a lot. That was a lot of information. That’s, hopefully I answered your question. 

Denise: No, that’s really helpful. So what I hear are a couple things. The first one is that on a physical level with regard to digestion or metabolism. No matter what you eat, when you ingest, then alcohol, your body will prioritize metabolizing the alcohol. So it’s sort of distracted, if you will. It’s like where your body could be taking in the food and using the food and digesting the food that you ate. Now it’s distracted by the alcohol. 

The other thing that I hear you saying is because the effects of alcohol on our, let’s say decision making, which is the prefrontal cortex. It can make what you’re trying to do in 63 surrendered more challenging, and so you would suggest. Taking alcohol and setting it aside for a time while we’re doing 63 surrendered, or when you’re first starting this journey. 

Now, for the woman who says, oh, that sounds like a great idea, but then finds that she cannot live without alcohol. That is when we say friends, it is time for you to skip on over to the Sacred Sobriety Lab and the Catholic Sobriety. Can you tell people where they can find you? Just right away. Go ahead and just tell me all your stuff. 

Christie: Yeah, you can find me. My website is the catholicsobrietycoach.com. You can check out my podcast, the Catholic Sobriety Podcast. I have lots of information there. I’m on all socials as the Catholic sobriety coach.

Denise: Okay? And I say that guys, because what I see is women spinning their wheels over and over and over when alcohol is their primary method of running from life. And it’s not food that they’re using. Perhaps if alcohol is the gateway into more food, but you will know if you should do alcohol first. 

Now I was one of those people that could plant two glasses of wine and maybe I’d have two glasses or maybe I’d have five. I just never knew which time it was gonna be. And so I was one of those people that chose to set alcohol down because it was creating so much chaos in my life. And I have chosen to not experiment with picking it back up.

But what I have seen in some. And I just feel like I need to say this somewhere and I’m gonna say it publicly right now. What I see is for the people who do put alcohol down is they almost, of course they should celebrate that, which is amazing. But then they pick food up or they pick sugar up.

And because they have done the hard work of putting alcohol down. They start having this belief, well that’s good enough. Well, at least I’m not drinking. And yet there’s still chain to food or sugar, and they don’t have the freedom that the Lord really wants for them. Do you wanna speak a little bit about, I think sometimes we call that a dual addiction. Do you wanna speak to that and what you’ve seen, Christie? 

Christie: Yeah, so I was one of those, like when I stopped drinking, I kept smoking cigarettes because I was like, look, I’ve already given up so much. Why am I gonna not smoke? I never had a problem with food, but I had a problem with that, and so it took me another. Oh, gosh, I don’t know, maybe six years before I quit smoking, which now I just shudder at that. But it’s just one of those things.

So you. I could have done it a lot sooner had I realized what was going on and the excuses that I was giving myself with that, but it is so common. That’s the thing I see on my end of it, Denise, is, yeah, I’ve stopped drinking, but now I’m noticing this uptick in sugar because our brains are like, I need. That spike, right? I need that dopamine spike. 

And even though you won’t get it the same way from sugar as you do from alcohol, it’s definitely one of those things that helps. Or you have that habitual like thing you just want like a treat in the evening or to replace what’s missing.

And the other thing that happens is sometimes women will, they’ll have their alcohol like in the evening, but then they’re noticing their cravings for sugar and stuff like all throughout the day. Now, they wouldn’t necessarily drink throughout the day, but they’ll notice their cravings that way.

So it just takes some time and awareness of like, okay, this is what I’m grabbing for, and planning what you’re gonna have instead. One of my clients, which I thought this was so smart of her, she would drink, I don’t know. I think she said in a wine glass every night she would put like sparkling water, lemonade, and I don’t know, some hard alcohol. I can’t remember what she put in it. Tequila or something. 

And she would have that every single night and sometimes it would be, a couple glasses or whatever. So one of the just micro habit changes that she made for that was to have that, but she just didn’t put the alcohol in it. 

And she said it took a little while to get used to it, but now she does it and there’s no drama about it because she just knows this is what I’m having. But she wanted that ritual. She even said the ritual of having like her little cocktail napkin and how your glass starts to, you get that condensation and it gets on the nap like so sensory was that glass of alcohol for her every single night. 

And so she’s been able to continue that, but do it in a different way. So I think just having the awareness around I quit, maybe you quit sugar and you notice an uptick in your alcohol. Maybe you quit alcohol and you notice an uptick in your sugar intake. I think it’s just. Noticing that and planning for it. 

So maybe instead of a lot of sugar, you have a cup of tea and just like a little square of dark chocolate. Just trying to make more healthy choices that are going to help you with your goals and where you wanna be.

Denise: Yeah. It’s all really about awareness and I cannot. Stress the time that the woman who’s listening to this, the time that we’re living in now is just so amazing. Christie and I both have careers based on helping women. With whatever is separating them from the Lord and these substances, whether it’s food, whether it’s alcohol.

So there’s an entire industry that we now have these tools and these very easy ways to be able to communicate with you so that whoever’s listening knows what to expect and why I say that is because there’s, I want you to hear that it’s a process. 

It’s a process. It’s individual. Staying connected with the Lord. He will tell you, now we’re going to do this, and now we’re going to do this. And I say that because I remember when I put down food, I didn’t know I had a problem with alcohol. That’s probably not even a hundred percent true. I always thought there might be a little bit of a disordered relationship, but you know, food was the big thing.

And when I put down food, I remember thinking, well, that’s okay ’cause I can just drink, like I can still stay a part of things. I can still celebrate, I can still have my thing, I can still have my treat. And so everything I was eating over now, I just started drinking over. So I wasn’t solving for anything and I didn’t have any tools other than I wasn’t eating.

And it was, and then when I realized, oh my gosh, now alcohol is becoming a prominent problem. I put that down and I picked up compulsive gum chewing, and then I put that down, you guys, and then you know what I would do? I would stop like almost every day. And I don’t know if I ever made it more than twice a day and get gas station hot chocolate, which was just a big, you know, sugar rush.

And I remember standing in the line. It was like five deep at a gas station getting hot chocolate and people were getting like cigarettes and lottery tickets and I was like, oh my gosh, you are just addicted to this. And so I wanna shortcut that for you and Christie does too. She’s like, I smoked for six years.

Denise Jelinek did all these other things for, I don’t know, a good six to eight years. And we’re hoping to shortcut that for you so that you can realize, hey, there’s a reason that you’re turning to something and we’re gonna help you actually be able to meet your emotional needs without a substance. That’s what coaching’s all about. How do you get through the ups and downs of life without drinking, eating, gum, smoking or, Or gas station hot chocolate. 

Christie: Yeah. And I have a client that’s what we’ve been working on because they gave up alcohol, but then they turned to a gentleman that I’m working with. He turned to cigar smoking and he was doing that like really habitually and he would have several a day.

And his sister-in-law noticed and she was like, I think you’ve just taken your alcohol and put it on cigar smoking. So then we talked about it and he still wanted to be able to have a cigar with his brother and their friends and on poker nights and stuff, I was like, well, you don’t have to remove it completely. Let’s try this. 

And that’s a lot of the work that I do, and I know you do too. It’s like, well, let’s get curious about it. Can you plan for it? And so he was like, okay, well I can maybe not buy a bunch of cigars, but when I am know that I’m gonna go to this poker night or whatever, I’ll get one and then I’ll have it there.

So he’s been able to. First of all, notice like, oh no, I am having those addictive tendencies. I just put them on something else and then it was on cigar smoking. So then he got that all figured out and we still talk about it when we meet, and he’s doing great with that. But then it went to.

A ton of sugar, like lots and lots and lots of sugar, like way more, and then he noticed it himself. So it’s a journey. You may notice, like what you said, Denise, there were several things. It wasn’t just one thing, but then you realize wait a second, this is becoming habitual. I need to address it. I need to figure out is this a problem? Can I do this less or do I even need to do it? Is it even serving me at all? Do I even need to do this and just go forward from there? 

The reason why I’m saying that is don’t be discouraged if you’re like, well then it’s just another thing and then it’s just another thing, It’s okay. Like just figure out what those things are. And eventually, like my client, you’ll start coaching yourself. You’ll start noticing these things yourself. And be able to dial it back or just tell your excuses look, I know you’re looking for something. What do you really need? Like you don’t need that chocolate.

You don’t need five cigars. You don’t need two glasses of wine. What is it that you really need? Do you need rest? Do you need to get out for a walk and have fresh air? Do you need just some quiet time with the Lord? Do you need to take a shower? That’s one of the things I tell my clients too.

If you feel like you’re gonna drink, hop in the shower ’cause that’s just gonna stop that process. And most of the time they come out and they’re like, yeah, I don’t even want a glass of wine now because they’ve calmed their nervous system because they realized they were at such a heightened level that being able to be in the shower or the bath, as long as the bath isn’t like triggering where you have to have wine in the bath.

Denise: Yeah. 

Christie: Then they give themselves time to pause and nine times out of 10 they’re like, yeah, I don’t even want it now. 

Denise: Yeah. To check in with themselves. I find that the majority of people when they have a, they won’t, one of those things, they’re either looking for a break, so they want permission to relax. Right. Which we believe that we have to put food in our mouths or wine or something to get us to relax, but really it’s just permission. 

They’re looking for appreciation like I just wanna reward. I wanna treat myself. Does that usually just means I wanna be seen for what I’ve done, I’ve accomplished. I want to be understood. I want appreciation. Okay. We can all give ourselves our own appreciation. It’s a skill, but you can do it. You can all give yourselves permission to stop. It’s a skill. You can do it. 

But I think the third part is they’re in what we call tornado thinking or in a stress response, and their brain just needs to calm down so their dog is barking. And the fastest way to calm a barking dog is to throw out a bone or drink wine or whatever. 

So usually the three things that people are truly really looking for is to calm down. That’s what they really need, is to just return the blood to their prefrontal cortex, to calm themselves down, to be able to give themselves permission to take a break and show themselves some appreciation and tenderness. And support. 

So, when we were preparing for what we were gonna talk about today, you wanted to share some of the neuroscience of alcohol versus food addiction, and you said you had a really great podcast that you could also refer to that. So can you give us let’s talk about alcohol and what’s happening in neuroscience?

Christie: Yeah, so there I will give you a few resources. Actually, first is Go and I’ll give Denise the link. I don’t know if you have show notes you can put in, but you can just go on YouTube and look up Dr. Huberman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, alcohol and Your Body that it’s a fairly long podcast. I think it’s like an hour and a half to two hours long, but it is chockfull of amazing information.

And the thing. It’s all science-based and it has to do with all of your body, not just your brain, but your whole body as well. And he’s not villainizing alcohol. Basically what his approach is do what you want, but know what you’re doing. I just really like that because I’m not here to tell anybody what they should and shouldn’t do. Denise isn’t here to tell you what you should and shouldn’t do.

But we are here to help you gain awareness and information and tools that you need so that you do know what you’re doing and how you can plan for it. If you want some of those things that may be, not jiving with you or you know that you’re having problems with.

The other thing is there’s a book that I love, I always recommend it. It’s called Drink the New Science of Alcohol and Your Health. It’s by Professor David Nutt. He really goes into the way, like what happens after your first drink of alcohol and how it affects your neurotransmitters, how it affects your body and all of those things.

It seems like it. I picked it up and I’m not an avid reader at all, and so I was like, I don’t even know if I’ll get through it. ’cause I thought maybe it’ll be too heady, like too academic. It wasn’t. It’s a really, really good book, so I highly recommend that so that you can do a little more research.

The other thing before I talk about it. Is, but don’t stay in research mode, right? Because you can get all this information and then wanna get more information and you keep doing what you’re doing, but you just have all the information and you’re like, that can even cause more shame because you’re like, now I know what I’m doing to myself and, but I’m not stopping.

So at some point you gotta get out of the elevator, right? You just. You’ve gotten all that information you need to step outta the elevator and put that into action. And that’s what coaching helps you do. Or you can do that on your own too once you have that information. 

So a couple things. I know Denise talks about this a lot, but our brains have been designed to do three things, right? They seek pleasure, they keep us safe, and they keep us comfortable. And wine completely, or wine or alcohol of any kind fits the bill for all three of those, and it does so super fast because when you take a drink of alcohol, it spikes your dopamine level.

Dopamine. Everybody’s heard about it, everybody’s talking about it. It’s one of those things, but. It is a feel good chemical and it spikes so high when you consume alcohol more than when you consume sugar or anything else. It spikes up really, really high and what goes up must come down and when it comes down, it actually will below the baseline and that’s what kind of keeps you habitually craving for more.

So I have some clients. Who will plan out alcohol and like they are not drinking during the week. They’ve reduced it a ton, but they are noticing that when they do have it, especially if they don’t have a plan for the next day, they will drink off plan the next day and maybe the next day. And that’s just because our bodies are craving that super spike in dopamine again. 

And so you can totally still do that if you’re like, I want to have alcohol, when I go out with my husband, or special occasions or maybe it is once a week. That’s fine, but you just have to know that the next day for you might be harder. It might be harder to resist. You’re gonna have more of that chatter, that mental, you know, chaos that’s kind of going on. 

You’re going to maybe have some excuses that are, you’re gonna have to kind of reframe and say, no, no, no, we’re not doing this. So if you plan for it, you know, you can totally. Get through that, but just knowing how it affects our brains I think is like, oh, that’s what it’s doing. And it removes some of the shame because it’s like, oh, it’s not just me. It’s like the way the alcohol is affecting my brain or and my body. And that can be different for everyone. 

So that’s one of the things. It also. Affects your serotonin levels, your gaba, like I said, the prefrontal cortex. Just all of those neurotransmitters and then it creates these neural pathways. And so if you’re habitually drinking again, I have, I know this woman, actually, I just interviewed her on my podcast. 

If you go and listen to her, her name is Cindy, and she was just a Friday night drinker. But she found herself going to aa, being in some online sobriety communities because she couldn’t stop, and she knew that it was causing a lot of. Problems elsewhere in her life. And that was just a once a day thing, but it was causing so much chaos in the buildup. 

Denise: So she was only drinking once a week? 

Christie: Yeah. Oh yeah. Sorry. Once a week. 

Denise: Yeah. Wow. 

Christie: Yeah, on Fridays. But it was because she had that neural pathway, and so what she had to do was just, she actually eliminated it all together. And if you think about it, this is the visual I give my clients. Like you think about every time you drink. Your brain’s like, oh yeah, reward good, and then you do it again. Oh, good reward. You do it again and it’s, you’re making this path. 

So if you’re like, let’s say you’re hiking and there’s this tall grass, you’re just slowly beating that down. And then. Over time, it just becomes a bald spot and it’s super easy just to reach for it. And if you even pause like what Denise and I were saying, you just pause, take a deep breath, that might, your brain will be like, no, that’s gonna take too long. I don’t wanna do that. I’m just gonna grab a glass of wine.

But it’s gonna take time of intentionally calming yourself and saying, okay, this is what I need to do first. Before reaching for that glass. And so what you’re gonna be doing is saying, no, I’m not gonna go down that ball. Easy path. I’m actually gonna have to make a new one. And so if you just think of it, it’s just gonna take time to beat down that grass to get it to where it’s, that is easy.

It will become easy for you, but it takes time. It’s just like anything else. Like Denise is really into fitness. Like you can’t, I can’t go to the gym today, Denise, and lift like a bunch of weights and be super buffed tomorrow. Can I or can I? 

Denise: Yeah. Right. Go ahead. And it takes time. 

Christie: Yeah. So just knowing that everything takes time, there’s no way around it. You just have to go through it. And that’s it. You just have to be patient with yourself. Love on yourself and know that God has equipped you with supernatural superpowers. We have these spiritual gifts that we can ask for more.

We can ask for a strengthening, we can ask him to just strengthen our fortitude, our temperance are resolved just to see things from a heavenly perspective instead of a worldly one sitting with the Lord and asking him, what do you think about my drinking? What do you think about the way that I’m drinking?

And just allowing him to tell you, to get honest with it. And he won’t be condemning or mean or anything like that. So if any of those shaming thoughts comes in, that’s not from him, but he will lovingly convict you because he wants you free. He doesn’t want you chained by anything that’s keeping you from him or keeping you from the life that he wants you to have and knows you can have.

Denise: So you said the Lord is not condemning or shaming, but let’s talk about the thing that you encounter often where women are just so confused because they are really keeping it together in air quotes. They’re doing the mom thing, they’ve got so much discipline and willpower. They’re eating clean, they’re working out, they’re praying. But they just can’t seem to stop drinking. So.

Christie: Yeah.

Denise: Help her with that. 

Christie: Yeah

Denise: Help make sense of that in her brain. Okay, go ahead. 

Christie: That happens so much most of my clients are high achieving, and I don’t mean like they’re in corporate America or anything like that, but they’re just, as you described, Denise, like they have it pretty much together and the thought of giving up alcohol is like, but that’s what’s holding me together. 

That’s what I look forward to as I’m getting through managing big emotions, making all these decisions, doing all these things like that is the thing that is getting me through. And what I work on with them is finding other things to get them through those other times. Again, like I said before, your brain is gonna say you need alcohol. Like alcohol’s the thing that’s going to help you. 

Maybe you even think it’s the thing that’s holding you together, holding everything together, and in reality it’s not, and it’s just pretty much a bandaid fix on what really needs to be looked at, what needs to be tended to. It’s just covering up those things that need attention. And by just kind of burying that, you’re not giving it the attention that it needs and it’s just gonna continue in this cycle, and you’re gonna keep wanting alcohol. 

So even though it’s tough, because then we have to actually. Think about the thoughts that we’re trying to not think about or we’re we have to feel the feelings that we haven’t really been wanting to feel. It’s so much more beneficial just to kind of take all that out, shine light on it. And when you do that, it loses its power over you, and that’s when you can start to address that. 

The other thing that I like to tell women is because so many of them. Are doing really well with their other habits or organization or anything and those types of things is look at where you’ve been successful because we can beat down ourselves, the enemy can beat us down. It seems like we have it coming from all different directions and we feel terrible and alcohol feels like that thing that lifts us up, which it does. It lifts us up, but it also tosses us back on the ground. 

But we think that is the thing that is going to help us. But once you start to actually look at how you’ve been successful at those things and apply it to this, that can be so empowering because you’re like, oh wait, I have tools that I’ve used before and I can do it again. You know. Rinse and repeat. But our brains are like, no, that’s too hard. But it was so hard the first time you decided to give up sugar for 30 days. Right. It’s not easy. 

Denise: Yeah. I always just like say, Hey, you just have to be willing to not be good at it. 

Christie: Exactly. 

Denise: That’s so uncomfortable. Just have to be willing to not feel good at something because you won’t be good at it. It’s a skill. None of us were born knowing it. And so it’s new and it’s not hard.

So the analogy I’d like to give is if somebody wants to feel good about their drinking or feel good about their eating, and I said, Hey listen, the only thing that you have to do is to brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand. You’re like, that feels very simple. 

Okay, so everyday that you went in and you accidentally grabbed your toothbrush with your dominant hand, you’d say, oh, oh, silly me. I forgot I’m doing it with the left hand. And it would just be, it would be uncomfortable and it would be something new, but we wouldn’t make it mean we’re wrong, we’re stupid, we can’t do it. It’s just a new pattern. 

And that’s all it is, is just getting our brains used to a new pattern. And learning how to coach ourselves through that. Which is what your program does so beautifully. And so, Christie, if someone is interested in working with you, can you tell our audience just a little bit about what your first steps are, what your process looks like?

Christie: Yeah, just what does that all look like in that sacred sobriety lab? That’s so interesting. 

Yeah, so it’s all about awareness, right? It’s about getting curious and figuring out like, where does alcohol serve me? Where does alcohol not serve me? Does it serve me at all? And the Sacred Sobriety Lab, I have included a course, and it’s just a self-paced course that women can go through.  It helps with all different things.

But mainly we start, we actually start the whole thing with a novena to the Holy Spirit, just to kind of invite the Lord into the entire process with us. And that’s why it’s sacred. It’s a sacred sobriety lab because we want to invite him in every step of the way because.Quitting alcohol. Well, and food too, because it’s such a communal thing, can feel very lonely and very, very  isolating. 

And when we know that we have a partner in this. The best partner ever, right? We have the Lord with us. Then it feels a little bit less lonely, like we are seen and we just have a guide. And so that’s, it’s woven all throughout the program. 

A lot of it deals with neuroscience, habit change. Faith is again, the forefront of all of it because it’s really all about freedom. Having peace to take alcohol or leave it. Really is what it’s all about. I have weekly group coaching within the Sacred Sobriety Lab and a community. 

So a community of other women who are on the journey with you, which is beautiful. And I have it as a 12 month program because I find that there’s so many firsts that come. Up that we need to coach through. So it could be a wedding, it could be Christmas, it could be 4th of July.

It could be a family member that only comes into town sometimes and you wanna kind of coach through a plan before that family member comes so that you can stay on track or plan your drinks or however you wanna do it. 

So that’s why I keep it as a 12 month program because I feel like it just builds this really strong foundation to where afterwards, women can stay in it as long as they want, but it just builds this foundation though, to where she has the tools, the resources, the knowhow, and the experience to then go on and coach herself through that process.

And then if she does feel like something else is coming up. Can use those the same, you know, your tools can apply to alcohol, I’m sure, and my tools can apply to like other things as well. So if you notice something else creeping up, then you can just, you know, pull out some of those tools and use them for, you know, maybe sugar or whatever it is that’s coming up.

I do also offer one-on-one coaching. I do that as a 12 week program. I call it my 12 week signature program. So it’s 12 weeks of one-on-one coaching. It doesn’t always, it’s not always exactly 12 months. Sometimes I usually say let’s do every week for six weeks, and then sometimes we go like every other week for the remaining.

But people have, the women have access to me via Voxer. They get access to the Sacred Sobriety Lab for 12 months. And, another thing, when you’re in the Sacred Sobriety Lab, you get. Access to any of the programs or tools I create within that 12 months. Like right now, I am running a sober summer challenge. It’s a 62 day challenge. It’s been so fun. We’ve been doing it in Slack and it’s been going really, really well.

So all my Sacred Sobriety lab members I just added them into that. And so those are just some of the ways you can work with me. But I have freebies. I have a five day sacred sobriety kickstart. It’s free, and that really helps you gain awareness around your decisions to drink and see like how it’s affecting you. But really, awareness is where it all starts. 

Denise: Yeah, I would agree. Well, Christie, this has been so full of so much of your wisdom. Thank you for sharing it with us. Is there anything that you would like to share with the woman who is listening? Anything else? 

Christie: Yes. Yes, absolutely. I just want you to know that if you are just noticing that alcohol is becoming a problem for you. It doesn’t mean that you have any label attached to you. It doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you. It just means that, first of all, if you have that awareness, then God’s kind of nudging you and saying, Hey sis, maybe you wanna take a closer look at this. And it may be keeping you from experiencing the joy that I have for you.

You know, when we numb out with alcohol, we do numb the bad stuff, but we also numb the good stuff, and the Lord doesn’t want us going through our lives blurry and not experiencing the fullness of joy that he has for us. 

So I just want you to know. To look at it, not with shame, not with judgment, but with curiosity and a willingness and an open heart to maybe decide or seek the help that you need to reduce or eliminate alcohol because it’s probably not serving you in the way that you think that it is.

Denise: That is beautiful. I like how you said, Hey, sis. Hey sis. Hey sis. Thank you so much for being here, Christie, and everybody, you can just go to our show notes so that you can see all the resources that Christie mentioned, as well as how to contact her. Thanks again, Christie. 

Christie: Thank you, Denise.